Guild Wars 2: Your Graphics Card And CPU Performance Guide

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

The anticipated sequel to Guild Wars is here, and we're putting this MMO through its paces to let you know what hardware you'll need in order to play it at its highest details. We also explore which processor architectures work best with Guild Wars 2.

Benchmark Results: Best Performance Preset

The game’s Best Performance preset represents our lowest-detail testing, and the litmus test for determining whether entry-level graphics cards can cut through Guild Wars 2's demands at 1920x1080.

Guild Wars 2 scales well on low-end hardware. Even the $40 Radeon HD 6450 is able to deliver more than a 30 FPS minimum at 1920x1080. The only graphics card we tested that isn't able to handle this resolution and detail setting is Nvidia's GeForce 210 DDR3. You'd need to use that board at a lower resolution, if you wanted to use it at all.

Graphics cards like AMD's Radeon HD 7750 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 550 Ti are considerably overpowered for this level of detail. You'd be much better off stepping them up to the Balanced preset.

Don Woligroski
148 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cmcghee358
    Hmm.. shame I can never touch an MMORPG ever again...
    Reply
  • haplo602
    get your graphs and test setup to match:

    Radeon HD 6450 512 MB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6670 512 MB DDR3
    Radeon HD 7770 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7970 3 GB GDDR5

    where's the 6850 in the graphs ? There's a 6870 instead ...
    Reply
  • rdc85
    I'm wonder how my pII x4 955BE will perform, there none in the chart...

    Anyone know? at stock speed and at 3.8 O.C....
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    Interesting. The less-than-$100-without-external-power-connector Radeon 7750 is a balance card providing appealing visual while still runs good framerates at 1080p. I imagined if you tinker with the Best Appearance preset a little bit you can get better image quality without framerates dropping below 30. I mean let's face it, who plays on their PC without tinkering the settings here and there, that's just stupid.

    Great review as always! Really appreciate it
    Reply
  • stingstang
    I'm disappointed that this neglects the post processing bar when determining if the best appearance setting is enabled when taking in to account processing ability. I have an fx4100 and an hd 7950. How will that do at high grahhics settings?
    Duh, we want to know this stuff.
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    9536678 said:
    get your graphs and test setup to match:

    Radeon HD 6450 512 MB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6670 512 MB DDR3
    Radeon HD 7770 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5
    Radeon HD 7970 3 GB GDDR5

    where's the 6850 in the graphs ? There's a 6870 instead ...

    Although it's probably a typo, there's probably no need to use the 6850 as well since the 7770 should perform similar
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    Now I wonder where some people got the idea that GW2 was nvidia favored O_o
    Reply
  • dormantreign
    You gots me wanting to buy this game......
    Reply
  • serhat359
    stingstangI'm disappointed that this neglects the post processing bar when determining if the best appearance setting is enabled when taking in to account processing ability. I have an fx4100 and an hd 7950. How will that do at high grahhics settings?Duh, we want to know this stuff.It will be cpu limited, you'll get around 35-40fps
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    Guild wars 2 min system requirements is Core 2 Duo 2.0 Geforce 7800, I would like u to test base on that too.
    Reply